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Which Framework should we build our Web app on?

3 points by lauken ↗ HN
My co-founder and I have a concept for a web service solution that we would like to begin developing. We have not been involved in development or hands-on programming for about 5 years. Our first step was to align with a developer I know from my corporate past. Our young start-up is now faced with a difficult decision, which framework do we build our web service on? We are intending on building content management system for a niche market. Our developer is recommending drupal but I am worried about building on a GPL license as it would close the door on an acquisition. Does HN have any suggestions? I heard Ruby on Rails has scalability issues. Microsoft is inherently more expensive. I would love your thoughts and I appreciate your time.

10 comments

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bwh2
It sounds to me like you're worrying about problems you don't have. You're talking scalability and acquisition before you have a single line of code, let alone any users.
lauken
Excellent point but isn't it prudent to take these factors into consideration before choosing a path? We don't want to dwell on the irrelevant but we would like to make a sound decision based on where we envision the product going. Do you have any words of wisdom for choosing a framework? Any recommendations?
bwh2
Worrying about scalability and acquisition is not prudent at this stage, it's a waste of time IMO. Odds are that nobody will use your CMS.

That being said, my advice is to get something up and running now and fail fast. I'm not a 37signals fanboy, but I think you should read: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

Your problem right now is to figure out what customers want. You need a product up and running. If you have a (good) HTML/CSS/JS/PHP developer on board who knows Drupal, he can probably get a Drupal+CCK prototype of your customized CMS up and running in a couple weeks, if not days. Who cares if Drupal isn't your long term solution? It just doesn't matter.

lauken
I am a huge fan of the 37signals content. As opposed to failing fast, we are attempting to do it right quickly. Some failures are the nature of the business but we are doing are best to take all parameters into consideration when making decisions.

Thank you very much for your response. We truly appreciate the perspective and reminder that building products for and engaging customers is more important than the framework.

bwh2
Glad I can help. Just to be clear about one point: I'm not suggesting that you intentionally fail. Rather, I'm just suggesting you lower the cost of failure.
adelevie
If you're not tech-minded, and the developer that you already have wants to use X, you should go with X. This increases the likelihood you have to spend big $$$ changing systems away from a GPL system so you can make even more $$$ from an acquisition.
lauken
Thanks alot for the comments and RoR suggestion. I am not sure I totally understand the second piece of the post. Are you stating that we will have to spend $$$ now transitioning to a new framework or were you saying that we would have to transition to a new framework before the big sale?
adelevie
the latter: transition to new framework before big sale.
lauken
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Your wisdom is truly appreciated. We had a discussion with our developer and gave him the opportunity to choose except for GPL frameworks.
adelevie
Oh and BTW, I've been on Rails for about a year and it's been excellent. Support from the Ruby community (blogs, presence on Stack Overflow) has been excellent, and so many of the gems/plugins have been so good. Not to mention, Ruby is a fun language to program in (at least for me).